steal away with the stars
by keep my issues drawn
Summary: -"I wish I could take the stars from the sky and keep them," she murmured.- LouisLucy.


I don't own Harry Potter. Funny, isn't it?

For February 15th on the prompts, oh, prompts thread over on the NGF forum.

Warning: cousincest

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><p>fantasy<p>

lyrical ; ragged fingernails ; wish

when she was just a girl / she expected the world / and so lying underneath those stormy skies / she'd dream of paradise -Paradise, Coldplay

louis/lucy

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><p>Watching her play the piano was like watching faeries dance, Louis thought. It wasn't as if he was watching her press each individual key, how his piano teacher had watched him as he attempted in vain to master the piano. It was as if her fingers flew across the piano, creating a beautiful melody that entranced the world. She'd laugh when he tried to put it across in words, telling her of her skill, she'd simply laugh it off, tell him that it was nothing special. It was something special though. Something magical, that made him feel alive, made him breathe, and see the world a little clearer than before. Did it make sense for him to say that? Did it make sense for him to try and tell people that she made the world clearer to him?<p>

Did he ever realise how much she was hurting? There she was, with her ragged fingernails, not bothering to cut them to make them more even. He always supposed she bit them so she could play, an artistic vision of some sort. He thought she'd tripped and fell when he saw the angry red marks on her wrists. Why was he always so wrong?

Maybe all she ever needed was a fantasy world. A place where everything was safe and sound, where the whole world wasn't set ablaze with hate and stereotypes, with pain and tears and hurt. Who could ever provide that for her? Who could give her the paradise she needed to save her from that world?

She was something like a Goddess to him. Something wonderful to be marveled at, but never touched, never really seen as equal, as a human being. It wasn't that she scared people away. Just Louis. He set her high on her stone pedestal above him, and he'd kneel at her throne, seeing her as this perfect being. Could he ever see her flaws? Maybe all he ever saw was her fingers fly across the keys, the cherries she loved so dearly touch her lips, her golden hair fall down to past her shoulders. He couldn't really ever see the pain in her eyes. He couldn't see that there was no sparkle left, because she was perfect, wasn't she? She was a Goddess, and him a mere mortal, content to sit and watch her, watching her from a distance as she sat on her throne.

Maybe it was a little too late when he found the real her. Maybe it was just that little bit too late, and there was no saving her. She wasn't a Queen, nor a Goddess. She wasn't a Princess, a faerie, an angel. She was just a lost little girl with her blonde hair falling past her shoulders and her fingers flying over the keys.

She had lay by his side in the meadow, their hands next to each others, so close that they could reach out and they would be touching. She had looked up at the clouds crossing the stormy sky, trying to escape from the world, trying to end it all, and a lone tear would glisten in her eye, but Louis wouldn't see it, because he was looking at the sky too.

"Do you believe in life after death?" she had asked him, and he'd been startled that she would ask such a question.

"I don't know," he had said honestly, "I really don't know."

She had stayed silent then, and he could tell that she was dreaming of a fantasy world, something better than the world they lived in, and he just wished he could help her.

"I expected more than this," she admitted, "I really did."

He had moved his head to the side to look at her, lying there in her summer dress, which was wet from the late-night dew on the grass, but her still looking beautiful. He realised she was just a girl then. Not the faerie he'd once believed her to be.

"More than what?" he asked.

A sigh escaped from her mouth, "Everything," she whispered, "I expected the skies to be brighter, the laughs to be louder, the love to be stronger, the meaning to be clearer." she paused, "Maybe I just believed in happy endings?"

"You still can," he told her, "I heard once that if it's not happy, then it's not the end."

Lucy laughed scornfully, "I believed that once. Now I just wait for the end. Don't you? What if we only get our happiness at the end? Do we have to spend the beginning and middle being desperately unhappy?"

Louis stood up, and pulled her up. He embraced her, and whispered in her ear, "There's some paradise out there for us, I know it. We just have to find it."

He looked up, and saw a shooting star fly across the midnight sky, "Make a wish." he whispered.

"I don't make wishes any more." she'd replied.

He wanted so desperately to make her believe, the way he always had. He'd believed in magic. Not the magic that they made, the magic that Hogwarts was so full of, but the fairytale magic. He'd always preferred the more old fashioned things though, and so he read of faeries, not fairies. In his eye, fairies were shallow and stupid, beings that were seen in Disney films, in little children's storybooks. Faeries were a different thing altogether. They were regal, and intelligent. Sometimes evil, sometimes good. Louis liked to think of these things, even if his observations were received with scorn from his siblings and cousins. Lucy was the one he always wanted to get to believe. Or maybe it was just that he wanted her to be a faerie herself.

You can't make someone something they aren't. Louis should have known that. It's an impossible feat to mould a broken girl who has given up all hope into the shape of a regal faerie.

"I wish I could take the stars from the sky and keep them," she murmured in his ear, as they lay once more on the dewy ground.

He'd simply nodded, and continued staring at the sky, as the stars glistened, "If I could catch them for you, I would." he told her, and looked at her blonde hair spread out over a blanket laid on the dewy ground.

He kissed her once. It didn't go any further. It couldn't have gone any further, really, could it? He was a dreamer, and she didn't believe any more. She'd say things that made him think maybe she could believe once more, but she'd always be too messed up, and he'd always be too trapped in his world of faeries and happy endings. He'd been a fool to kiss her really. Not that he ever regretted it. He only regretted that it didn't happen again.

She hadn't kissed him back. She'd drawn away and looked at him, the look in her eyes telling him that she was too broken, and that it was wrong. They both knew it could never work. He had nodded, and walked away, and she'd sunk against a wall, and stayed there until the light came through the windows, and hurt her eyes.

He watches her still. He watches her as her fingers fly across the piano keys and faeries dance. He watches her long, blonde hair glistening in the sunlight. They don't lie together under the stars any more. They don't exchange meaningless comments, and she's just a little too broken to look him in the eye. Maybe he could have saved her, and maybe she could have loved him back, in a different place, a different time. He tries not to wish on stars any more because he's accepted that some wishes just won't come true. But he's never going to stop believing, even if Lucy already has.

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><p><strong>Please <span>don't <span>favourite without reviewing. I hope you enjoyed it. **


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